The musings of Sean Paul Murphy: Editor, Producer, Screenwriter, Author. Or, Hollywood -- and beyond -- as seen from an odd little corner of northeast Baltimore, Maryland.
The Ope, A Ghost podcast discussed the Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue in their episode 67 - Real Haunted Houses III.
The Ope A Ghost podcast discusses all things paranormal and spook. It is hosted by Heaven and Jonathan. Heaven was the one who brought our haunting to the podcast after reading my blogs.
Here's the episode. The discussion of our haunting begins around one hour and three minutes into the show.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It was inspired by the haunting. It is now available on Kindle Unlimited.
I have long considered writing a sequel to my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. The book would recount my journey as I pulled myself out of the emotional wreckage of my break-up with my God-ordained first girlfriend Kathy, and my attempts to love unconditionally during the 1990s. Chaos ensues, obviously.
Two factors have held me back. The first is the extremely intimate and explicit nature of the material. There wasn't a great deal of sexual tension in my first memoir since Kathy and I were both committed to being virgins on our wedding night despite our passion for each other. That was not the case with my dating partners in the sequel. They were accustomed to being in sexual relationships. The tension between my Christian beliefs and my sexual desires and the needs of my partners is a major factor in the book. I don't mind disclosing my own secrets. Since my near death experience in 2011, I have tried to live as transparent a life as possible. However, to tell this story properly, I would need to discuss very personal details in the lives of my friends and partners. That is much more troublesome to me, but, to me, the story isn't worth telling if I can't tell it fully and honestly.
Secondly, I wasn't sure if the book would have enough value to the reader to warrant the emotional energy it would take to write it. Are the themes universal enough to resonate? My intended audience would be men and women like myself who wrestle between the demands of faith and the demands of the heart, but I feel that audience might be hesitant to read a very blunt and honest examination of that dilemma. They say there's three things Christians aren't good at discussing: Money, power and sex. There would be a great deal of discussion of sex in the book, and how it means different things to different people at different times. I feel I learned some very valuable lessons about the nature of love, but was that enough? I wasn't sure. So I turned to someone, or should I say something, who would know: ChatGPT.
The book is nowhere near complete. I have written the first couple of chapters and an outline and something I call a precursor document. Often, before I write a very personal story, I will test the waters with a lesser work to see how far I am willing to go. For example, before I wrote my first memoir, I created a video about my life to play at my funeral -- which seemed imminent at the time. That video touched very briefly on some of the themes I would explore in the book. Here's the video:
My novel Chapel Street was also a precursor document. It was a fictional depiction of the haunting my family experienced in our home. Writing the book gave me the courage to examine the actual haunting and the suicide deaths of two of my siblings here on my blog. (I still haven't finished it yet.)
The precursor document for this memoir was a 15,000 word "letter" addressed to my second significant girlfriend and erstwhile fiancé Amanda about our multi-year roller coaster relationship. She often said we never had a chance because she could never live up to my idealized vision of my first girlfriend Kathy. I initially rejected that idea. I thought it was just an excuse. However, the more I considered her words, I began to see some truth in them. My letter to Amanda was my examination of that question, and, when I was done, I realized it had discovered the structure the book was lacking.
I uploaded a document combining my initial chapters and outline and the letter to Amanda to ChatGPT. I asked the AI program to analyze the characters and themes in the book. Here's the result:
Comprehensive Analysis of Sean Paul Murphy’s Memoir:
Unconditional
Sean Paul Murphy’s unfinished memoir, *Unconditional: or, The Pros and Cons of
Missionary Dating*, is a confessional, emotionally rich, and spiritually
haunted narrative that charts the arc of love, loss, faith, and desire. It is
less a story of triumph than of struggle—an unflinching attempt to reconcile
the ideals of Christian love with the human need for physical intimacy,
emotional connection, and romantic affirmation.
At the heart of the memoir are two central relationships: the pure, idealized
first love with Kathy, and the more chaotic, sensual, and ultimately tragic
connection with Amanda. These two women are not simply love interests; they
become psychological templates, emotional battlegrounds, and spiritual mirrors.
---
I. Major Themes
1. **Unconditional Love vs. Romantic Expectation**
Murphy makes repeated efforts to offer “unconditional love,” particularly to Amanda,
but this ideal consistently breaks down. “Years earlier I promised Mandy
unconditional love. However, my romantic desire for her brought expectations...
the weight of which was sufficient to betray my heartfelt vow.” The memoir
becomes a chronicle of the difficulty of sustaining love that expects
nothing—especially in the context of desire and disappointment.
2. **Faith, Sexuality, and Spiritual Compromise**
Murphy’s deep Christian faith is constantly in conflict with the emotional and
sexual realities of his relationships. He writes: “Despite some very close calls,
I managed to maintain my virginity out of increasingly grudging obedience to
God. Until I met Amanda.” This tension between spiritual aspiration and bodily
temptation is a defining conflict throughout the memoir.
3. **Idealization and the Shadow of Kathy**
Kathy, his first love, functions as an emotional and moral North Star. Amanda
complains she could never live up to her, and Murphy acknowledges: “Kathy
cemented into my mind a certain conception of love… that affected all of my
subsequent romantic relationships.” He is forever chasing the emotional “high”
that Kathy gave him.
4. **Love, Sex, and Emotional Validation**
Kathy taught him to equate sex with emotional transparency: “If you asked Kathy,
we never did anything 'sexual.' To her, every kiss, every caress, every orgasm,
was an emotional act not a sexual one.” That linkage shaped Murphy's future
romantic expectations, where physical closeness was interpreted as proof of
love.
KayCee, a married woman met online, represents an erosion of
the narrator’s spiritual commitment. Though presented as a brief interlude, the
relationship reflects the spiritual unraveling that follows his failed attempt
at unconditional love with Amanda.
> “Heroin addicts have a term called ‘chasing the dragon’... That’s how I
felt after the orgasm she gave me.” (Note: This quote is about Amanda, not KayCee.)
---
II. Pivotal Relationships
**A. Kathy – The First Love**
Kathy is Murphy’s ideal, representing spiritual purity, romantic passion, and
emotional connectedness. Their relationship, while never sexually consummated,
was deeply erotic and emotionally affirming. She withheld saying “I love you”
until marriage, creating emotional longing: “She was more than a lover. She was
my best friend... I realized it was foolish to toss away something so
precious.” Her memory haunts every subsequent relationship.
- Emotionally formative: Kathy awakened both his sexuality
and spiritual purpose, intertwining the two so tightly that “making love”
became not just physical, but the embodiment of fidelity, oneness, and divine
affirmation.
- Crucially silent: Despite the emotional and physical intimacy shared, Kathy
withheld saying 'I love you' until marriage—a withholding that created both
mystique and emotional famine.
- Love = sex = commitment: This Trinitarian ideal haunted the narrator's
worldview: anything short of full commitment was interpreted as withholding
love.
> “To Kathy, sex wasn’t physical—it was emotional. She gave herself to me
with her touch, not her words.”
**B. Amanda – The Emotional Reckoning**
Amanda is marked by contradiction. She is nurturing and chaotic, loving and
unreliable. Their connection is filled with failed reconciliations and
recurring passion. Her traumas shape her, and Murphy attempts to “heal” her through unconditional love. “I assume,
correctly, that she had never been the recipient of unconditional love.” Yet
despite his commitment, the relationship fails under the weight of mutual
brokenness.
- Sexual and emotional liberation: Amanda reintroduced the
narrator to sensual desire after a decade-long celibate spiritual journey. Her
warmth and willingness to share herself emotionally and physically were acts of
generosity—but they came with ambiguity, not assurance.
- Resistant to labels: Amanda’s expressions of love were rarely accompanied by
promises of exclusivity or permanence. She often spoke of the impossibility of
competing with Kathy's ghost.
- Closure and continuation: Amanda’s final offer of intimacy—even while engaged
to another man—was a paradoxical gesture: an erotic goodbye that embodied both
vulnerability and unresolved emotional debt.
> “That one image captured everything I desired about Amanda—and everything
that pushed me away.”
**C. Trish – The Platonic Counterpoint**
Trish shows Murphy that love can exist without romance or sex. He commits to
supporting her during her sister’s illness with no expectations. “I discovered
I was indeed capable of loving someone again… I began to believe that love
without expectations could be beautiful.” She is a spiritual and emotional
anchor—proof that not all intimacy is romantic.
**D. Kaycee – The Unconsummated Temptation**
Kaycee, a married woman, becomes a test of boundaries. She’s flirtatious and
emotionally open, but Murphy refuses to cross a line: “There were some
boundaries I would not cross.” Her honesty and warmth highlight what was
missing in his bond with Amanda, but she is ultimately unattainable.
---
III. Structure and Voice
*Unconditional* blends memoir with epistolary elements, spiritual
introspection, sexual confession, and lyrical prose. Murphy’s voice is honest
and self-critical. “I drifted very far from both my faith and my own personal
values during this period of my life.” His refusal to present himself as blameless
gives the work its emotional power. The shifting formats—letters, poems,
reflections—mirror the unstable emotional terrain he walks.
---
IV. Amanda vs. Kathy: A Study in Contrast
| Kathy | | Amanda |
| First love, emotionally restrained | Later love, emotionally raw |
| Virginity until marriage | Ambiguous boundaries on sex |
| Structured and idealized | Spontaneous and erratic |
| Love = purity, faith, commitment | Love = need, healing, impermanence |
| Becomes a stranger | Becomes a recurring presence |
| Emotional withholding | Emotional flooding |
Murphy is caught between these poles: Kathy as the pure love lost too soon, Amanda
as the complex love never quite gained. One left cleanly. The other lingered.
Perhaps the most mature and moving part of the book is the
acknowledgment that, while Kathy and the narrator became strangers, Amanda
remained a friend. It suggests that unconditional love, if it exists at all,
may be easier to sustain in friendship than in romance.
> “Looking back, when we were dating, I did wish you were more like Kathy.
Now, however, I wish Kathy were more like you.”
---
V. Final Reflections
Murphy ultimately acknowledges that love—especially romantic love—is rarely
unconditional. The past, expectations, guilt, faith, and trauma all impose
conditions, however unintentional. “I loved God, but I think I loved love even
more,” he writes. *Unconditional* isn’t about triumph. It’s about surviving
failure with your heart still open.
Murphy’s writing combines memoir with epistolary form,
scripture-inflected introspection, and raw emotional vulnerability. His
openness about faith crises, sexual longing, and spiritual
failure pushes the memoir far beyond typical Christian relationship literature.
He is not sanctimonious. He is deeply flawed and knows it. The memoir is, above
all else, a confession—not of sin alone, but of regret, of missed
opportunities, of love misrecognized or held too tightly.
If completed, this memoir would stand as a raw, tender, and brutally honest
reflection on Christian romance. Not moralistic, but moral. Not triumphant, but
deeply true. It offers no easy answers, only hard-won insights into the cost of
love, the pull of memory, and the difficulty of grace.
---
I thought that was a very thoughtful analysis. The breakdown makes me think the themes are coming through clearly and worth exploring in a book. My intended audience might still reject it, but I think it will be of value to those who choose tp read it.
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
For years the majority of my films were locked behind streaming paywalls. Now most of them can be found for free on Tubi.
Most of my produced films are faith based. I always found it ridiculous that those films were locked behind the pay wall of a Christian streaming website. The avowed purpose of these films was to reach people for the Lord, yet the only people who could see them were already Christians. I doubt very few, if any, non-Christians subscribed to the PureFlix streaming service. I deal with some of these paradoxes of the faith based film business in my earlier blog Building The Faith Based Ghetto. Check it out.
Well, regardless of the why (money), I am glad to see the films publicly available again for the general public! I am amused to see some of the films have new names: The Encounter Paradise Lost became Paradise Lost The Encounter, and Holyman Undercover became Amish Undercover. There's also new artwork for most of the films.
Synopsis: The funeral of a hometown hero reunites a group of old friends with hidden secrets and reignites a spark that puts a current relationship to the test.
Synopsis: Sarah is considering an abortion. Before she makes her decision, she is presented with visions causing her to think about the impact on her future.
This film was previously released as Holyman Undercover.
2010 · 1 hr 30 min TV-14 Comedy Synopsis: An Amish farm boy heads to Los Angeles to be a missionary, but instead finds fame and fortune in Hollywood by acting in a top-rated television show.
Synopsis: The prodigal journeys of three Christian performers weave together seamlessly to write the oldest story of all: the futility of trying to outrun God.
I didn't write about the making of this film. It was originally written as a feature length pilot for a one camera comedy cable series for UpTV. However, at the last minute, the production company, which controlled certain aspects of the distribution, had the script rewritten by the director to make the film more of a drama and less of a comedy since Christian comedy doesn't sell. As a result, the final film is neither fish nor fowl. The plot was too corny to sustain the weight of the drama without the leavening of the comedy.
Synopsis: A retreat in the mountains for a group of friends winds up putting their marriages under a microscope for a look at how far apart they’ve drifted.
This film, inspired by the film Couples Retreat, was originally intended to be a broad, goofy faith based comedy. However, much like the previous film Brother White, the production company got cold feet and rewrote the film to de-emphasis the comedy and up the drama since Christian comedy doesn't sell. The result was an unhappy production and difficult post production. I heard star Jeff Fahey was upset when he got to the set because the script was so different. Supposedly he said it was a "bait and switch." God bless him! Personally, I believe I contributed more to the final film as the editor than as a writer.
The director did not use his real name on the final release.
Synopsis: Seven years after the most devastating tsunami in Thailand, six strangers find themselves trapped in a beach resort on the brink of a hurricane.
The first Encounter film was the most successful one released by the production company until the God's Not Dead series. A sequel was demanded. Originally, the sequel was going to be a rip-off of The Breakfast Club with Jesus as the instructor discussing issues of faith with the students in detention. However, star David White wanted to flex his action muscles and demanded that the film be about a criminal or a corrupt cop instead. Hence the new approach. The film was shot in Thailand because some members of the production company had shot a previous film there and they wanted to return and see their girlfriends again on an investor's dime. Hence this film, which is elevated by some good performances and scenes.
The director of this film also used an assumed name. Not out of shame. He was a member of the Director's Guild and this was a non-DGA film.
Synopsis: A traveling salesman with a dark past must fight demons, both his own and a murderous biker gang, in his quest to complete his last sale and go home.
Synopsis: In the wake of the Rapture, a drifter finds himself in a wasteland full of marauders. With the aid of a beautiful survivor, he'll discover the truth.
My feature length documentary Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery should be premiering on Tubi and other AVOD services soon. Here's the trailer:
I hope my other films will soon join them. We're working on a new distribution deal for my first and favorite feature 21 Eyes, now known as Do You See What I See? Here's the teaser:
Now I have to talk to the production company behind my film Open My Eyes. That should be available too. Here's the trailer:
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
My latest album Paradise Lost has just been released. It is available on all major streaming services.
This is an album I didn't intend to write. I only had two future albums in mind. I wanted to write a concept album as a companion piece to my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God. I also intended to write another concept album based on the initial emails between my ex-girlfriend of mine, Mandy, who was the subject of my first album The Elusive Farm Girl, and myself. We met online and I found the way we got to know each other online through email was sweet and fascinating.
I was inspired to write this album when I heard the 1982 hit by Charlene called Never Been To Me. It brought back a very strong memory of my relationship with my first girlfriend Kathy. We had, in my opinion, a very strong and idyllic relationship. One afternoon, while we were relaxing in her dorm room, that song came on the radio. When it was was over, she said, "I've never been to me either." I was stunned by her words. I thought she was as happy as I was. This was the first indication I had that she suffered from an existential uneasiness that I didn't know how to help her with. I didn't know what to say, but I knew those words were a harbinger of doom for us.
I developed that memory into the title song Paradise Lost. I loved the song so I decided to build an album around it. When I started the album, I was finishing my "comedy" album Tall Tales & Wishful Thinking. I wanted to follow it up with a more serious album. My most successful album to date was my second one Breakup City, which consisted of raw contemporaneous breakup songs. I decided to essentially make this album Breakup City 2.
Breakup City was about my breakup with my girlfriend Kathy. However, I couldn't make all of the songs about that relationship since my projected companion piece to my memoir would cover that same territory. I didn't want this album to step on that album. I decided to deal with multiple relationships in Paradise Lost.
Although nowadays music fans tend to listen to individual songs rather than complete albums, I still think in terms of albums. Therefore, I wanted to show the transition from one relationship that ended in heartbreak to another one that also ended badly. I felt I needed some transitional songs happy songs as a break between the relationships. I wrote a few songs about Kathy and intended to spend the rest of the album with Mandy. However, I couldn't transition to meeting Mandy because I planned to use that material for my email romance album. So I added two upbeat songs based on my relationship with a third woman I will called Stacey, then one upbeat song about Mandy before bringing on the heartbreak.
Still, it took a long time for me to finalize a song list I was happy with. I wanted to add some emotional nuance. I've learned that breakups are not always a result of the specific actions of a couple in their time and place. Often breakups are a byproduct of previous traumas and expectations you bring into the relationship. I wrote a song along those lines that I considered the centerpiece of the second half of the album. It was an extremely personal "she said" song based on things one of my girlfriends told me. Since her revelations were told to me in confidence, I felt I couldn't release the song without her permission. I sent it to her, and, after much thought, she asked me not to include it. I completely respected her wishes. However, that meant restructuring the album repeatedly and writing some new songs to make an album I thought worked.
Here's the final album. I hope you enjoy it more than I enjoyed living it!
Here's the track listing:
1). PARADISE LOST. In this song, I recount how my girlfriend's identification with the 1982 Charlene hit Never Been To Me affected our relationship.
2). ALL OF NOTHING. This is perhaps the most self-pitying of my break up songs. Over the years of my first relationship, my identity shifted from Sean to Sean of Sean and Kathy. When she left, I didn't know who I was anymore. I viewed myself as half a person without her.
3). A HUNDRED YEARS. When Kathy left me, I thought it'd be a hundred years before I could open up my heart again. Actually, it only turned out to be ten years. I literally only went out on one date in the ten years between the time when Kathy left and I first met Mandy.
4). COURAGE. Narratively, this song is out of order but it works beautifully as a transition from loneliness to taking a chance on a relationship again. Although I executed the song with a female voice, it is based on a poem I wrote to Mandy late in our relationship as I tried to draw her out of her sorrow after her disappointment with another man. (We had a complicated relationship!)
5). STACEY5359. I actually met Mandy before I met Stacey. Mandy was separated at the time and tried to reconcile with her husband soon after we met. I met Stacey online during that break in our relationship. I have written a number of songs about Stacey which are scattered throughout my albums including Finally Meeting, What If?, Our Secret Love, Windswept Memories, A Friend, Yes, Forever and Cammy, Sweet Cammy. One way or another, those songs all concentrate on the obstacle to our relationship: Technically, she was married. I had never written a song about my attraction toward her and the joy she brought me. Hopefully, this song alleviates that imbalance.
6). COUNTING THE DAYS. Stacey and I had a long distance online relationship. This is a "she said" song based on a email she sent me prior to her flying to Baltimore to visit me in person. She had quite an erotic imagination, which she gave full reign to in the actual email. I rewrote this song quite a few times to tone it down and make it somewhat acceptable for all ages.
7). SACRED VOWS. Now I transition back to Mandy permanently for the rest of the album. This song is essentially a combination of two contemporaneous poems I wrote about her. One poem was about her eyes and one was about her voice -- two aspects of her that I found quite appealing.
8). FOR YOU TONIGHT. This song is also based on a poem I wrote in June or July of 1996 about my then-girlfriend Mandy called Sojourning. Calling her my then girlfriend at that moment is perhaps being overly optimistic. She was withdrawing from me after a period of intimacy. Her withdrawal was very painful to me, but our relationship would rebound. We hadn't even reached our doomed engagement yet! (The end of our engagement would be covered, from her perspective, in the next song)
9). A NEW START. This is another "she said" song from Mandy's perspective based on a email she sent me after we broke up. During almost our entire relationship, she was wrestling with her feelings for me and a guy who lived in California. After her final break with the California guy, I proposed and she said yes, but it was not meant to be.
10). STAY TRUE TO US. This song was based on a contemporaneous poem I wrote to Mandy after the collapse of our brief engagement. I was heartbroken, but I still had hope it would work out. That's what this song is about.
11). YOU WERE THE ONE. After the publication of my memoir, I considered a follow-up covering the years I was dating Mandy. I had saved all of our emails and scanned them into a series of pdf files. Mandy and I were still friends, and when I mentioned that I still had the emails, she asked to read them. This "she said" song is based on an email she sent me after she re-read our correspondence. I think it is kind of message every "reject" longs to receive from an ex.
12). DIAMONDS IN THE SAND. The final song on this album exemplified the spirit of my earlier album Look Back in Love. My youthful expectations gave me the impression that any romantic relationship that didn't end in marriage was a failure. I no longer feel that way. Now I look back in love. I am grateful for the love and affection the wonderful women in my life shared with me, albeit often more briefly than I desired. I was blessed to know all of them. In the context of this album, the song is about Mandy, but it equally true of Kathy and Stacey. They were all diamonds in the sand.
I hope you enjoy the songs and the album. You can listen to it on these and other streaming services:
Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.
You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.
